"Temperatures up to 45 celcius...

...but skies beginning to clear"

That was the weather report on radio this morning and I was relieved to hear the second part.

It's the very worst weather in my opinion, air you have to eat rather than breathe.

Photo. Karen Dias Gulf News

The heat I can take, in fact I'm only happy in hot sunny weather. Humidity I hate but in fact that hasn't been bad at all recently, quite comfortable really.

But the dust. I can't think of anything worse and it's been like it for the past couple of weeks.

In New Dubai we have more than just the sand, we have cement dust from the construction. It gets everywhere, inside the car inside the apartment, onto and into everything.

Including us.

A few years down the track I suspect that there'll be an epidemic of bad health caused by it among all of us who've lived here during the construction boom.

Then and now

Yesterday...

 Today...

That's better!

I can't believe the weather we've been having. It's so un-Australian.

We're coming into winter so cooler temperatures are normal, but the wet certainly isn't par for the course.  

The last time I remember a period like this was way back in the mid-eighties.

But...today was sunny so I went for a walk. Blue sky. Crystal clear air. Sunshine.

I walked around the next bay to the one I live on...

That's how it should look, not wet and gray.

The forecast for tomorrow is sunshine all day. But then the clouds and showers are forecast for the rest of the week.

Bummer.

We have weather

Australia's the world's driest inhabited continent, and the drought over the plast decade is testament to that.

Not this year though.

We've just had the coldest May since 1970 and we have plenty of rain, 100mm since yesterday morning.

We're also getting things I haven't seen before. This morning I looked out of the lounge window to see this:



Two lost weeks

There hasn't been anything to report because I seem to have lost the last couple of weeks.
Dubai to Sydney door-to-door is a long and tiring journey so that takes some recovery time.

Then there's the six hour time difference that confuses the body clock for a good while.

Added to that a virus has had me flat on my back feeling awful for a few days.

But at least I was indoors in the warm.

We've had the wettest, windiest, coldest May days for a long time, so indoors was the place to be.

Tuesday we had severe weather warnings for the Sydney area and got winds of up to 110kph overnight.

They were southerlies - that's the cold ones down in this part of the globe. The weather bureau said it would reach a maximum of 14C but the winds would make it feel ten degrees colder.

I poked my nose out and it sure did feel like about four or five.

The coldest May day for eleven years they said.

The battered body is adjusting to that too, having just come from 42C in Dubai.

I'll just about get on top of it all when it'll be time to come back.

The Brits & weather

Three weeks in the UK and I've fallen into the habit of the weather being the first topic of conversation.

Our first week was warm and sunny, so was the third - in fact the Daily Telegraph ran a story last week headed "Heatwave to stay...with chance of 25C today"

But the week between was wet, cloudy and the temperature struggled to a peak of thirteen or fourteen celcius. But that doesn't stop the Brits stripping off if the sun comes out. 

We were huddled in a coffee shop, hiding from the eleven degrees and howling wind that took it much lower, when several women walked by enjoying the sunshine dressed like this:

Later in the week in Devon the temp dropped even more. The car told us that in the afternoon it was eight degrees:

And a few minutes later, even though there was no sunshine, they were in T-shirts, shorts, thin blouses to enjoy the balmy weather:

Last week someone said to me that people had been complaining about the cold since about November but a day of warm sunshine and they were already moaning about the unbearable heat.

I have hundreds of photos of our trip to sort out of course and I might post a few soon. More importantly, I found a bag of forgotten photos of Dubai back in the seventies so I'll be able to do a new 'Old Dubai' post when I've sorted them and enhanced the faded ones.

Cyclones, floods & fires

Mother Nature is dominating the news here in Oz, showing that we're a real land of extremes.

As I said yesterday, in Sydney we've had a record hot spell.

Overnight was as uncomfortable as predicted, it was still 30C at midnight and humidity up in the ninety percent area.

Then a southerly buster came through with a thunderstorm at 3pm today and at 5pm we were at 20C.

Up in far North Queensland they're counting the $billions of damage after Cyclone Yasi.

Photo:Dave Hunt AAP

 In Victoria they're battleing huge floods across a lot of the state, with extensive stock losses and damage.

Photo: Nadine Walker ninensm

And right now over in Western Australia out-of-control bushfires are raging through suburbs of Perth.

Photo: paulpichugin.com.au

The current situation is that 20 homes have been destroyed, mass evacuations are under way and firefighters are deperately trying to defend houses.


Monday Update

The Perth fires are still out of control, with 59 homes destroyed and 28 damaged.

Whingeing weather

I see Dubai's weather is rain, low temperatures, a shamal and sand storms.

Sydney has whingeing weather too. We're in day six of a heat wave and the whingeing hasn't stopped.

'Can't sleep' is the most common complaint, as we're having record high minimum overnight temperatures and new records for the number of consecutive hot nights.

It'll be the same tonight. The weather report just said it reached 43C today and most of the night will be around 30C.

Temps are measured in the shade of course, so with the sun blazing from our clear, blue, cloudless sky it's very hot. And as February is our most humid month it's quite uncomfortable too.

Several severe fire warnings have been issued and a large area of the state, including Greater Sydney, has a total fire ban in place. The Rural Fire Service has dealt with over a hundred bush and grass fires this week. They're spread around, with currently new fires being fought in the Blue Mountains to the west and here on the Central Coast to the north.

A cool change is forecast for tomorrow and by Monday the Met Bureau says "the daytime temperatures will be close to the overnight temperatures Sydneysiders have been suffering this past week".

I have a lot of running around to do next week so I'm quite pleased to hear that.

Cyclone Yasi

There are hundreds of photos in the media showing damage caused up in Far North Queensland by cyclone Yasi, but one in particular seems to me to sum up the power of the wind and rain.

Forty million dollars-worth of yachts and cruisers at Port Hinchinbrook piled up like a kid's toys.

Photo AFP

A-OK after Cyclone Yasi

Well, it was a category five cyclone, the same as Katrina which devastated New Orleans, but current reports are no deaths or serious injuries.

Cyclone Yasi veered south just before making landfall and instead of slamming directly into Cairns hit much smaller towns.

People who've been to Far North Queensland, usually to visit the Great Barrier Reef, Daintree Rainforest or the small islands, will know the small coastal towns of Mission Beach, Tulley, Innisfail, Cardwell, Ingham...all were hit badly.

Tulley, a small town with a population of about 3,500, is one of the worst hit with one in three houses destroyed or damaged. The town centre looks like this:

Photo:  John Wilson HeraldSun

There's a lot of damage and as flooding followed the winds it's not over yet.

Trees are down everywhere and one of the big industries up there, banana plantations, has lost 90% of the crop. Bananas are a $400 million industry and there's also been an estimated $500 million of sugar cane destroyed, so the damage bill is high.

Photo: Jamie Hanson HeraldSun

But so far there are no human casualties, although the emergency services still haven't been able to reach some smaller towns or isolated properties.

Even if they do find casualties it'll be a small toll compared to the size of the cyclone. Category Five is as bad as it gets.

The reason is that the Queensland government and emergency services did an excellent job of informing people what to expect, issuing evacuation orders, setting up evacuation centres, telling people what to do. Radio was used extensively - the ABC local radio network is used in emergencies like bushfires or cyclones as an information service.

Last evening I heard them telling anyone who hadn't yet evacuated that it was too late, they must not venture out but go to the safest room in their house etc etc.

Good stuff.  I usually criticize governments and bureaucrats but this time they got it right.

Thousands did as they were told and went to evacuation centres such as shopping malls. When they see the damage outside they'll be glad they did.

I've also been impressed with the Queensland Premier Anna Bligh. She seems to have been everywhere, she's all over the media giving people hard, up-to-the-minute information, something that normally is the last thing we get.  

There are plenty of interviews with people of course. I particularly liked the wry humour of the policeman asked before the cyclone hit by the Sydney Morning Herald how his family would be staying safe. "My wife must have got hold of a good long-range forecast - she cleared off with the kids two years ago" he said.

Wild weather again

A tiring journey, almost exactly 24 hours door-to-door when I arrived home at 11pm yesterday.

There's also a seven hour time difference to adjust to, so I'm all over the place at the moment. Can't sleep, can't do much else, so I thought I'd check in here for a few minutes.

I've just received an e-mail from a Dubai friend warning of storms on the way for the next couple of days. The weather's the main news here too.

Sydney is in the middle of a very warm spell, over 40C the last couple of days and today high thirties, and as February is our most humid month it's quite uncomfortable. We also had one of the highest-ever overnight low temps last night apparently, at 26.4C.

There are bushfires in a couple of Sydney suburbs, under control fortunately, and more than seventy though New South Wales.

The big news though is the massive Cyclone Yasi due to hit Far North Queensland in a few hours at 10pm. It's a catagory five cyclone, 500 kilometres wide and it's headed straight for the area where the two cities of Townsville and Cairns and several smaller population centres are located.

It's forecast that winds will be as high as 300kph and will last 24 hours. That's much worse than Cyclone Tracy which destroyed the Northern Territory capital of Darwin in 1974.

Murphy's Law comes into play yet again, because Cyclone Yasi's landfall will coincide with a high tide and a two metre storm surge is expected in Cairns city centre.  This on top of Queensland's floods that made world-wide news a couple of weeks ago, which still haven't fully receded.

Thousand of people have moved inland. They say 30,000 have gone and the Queensland Premier is urging more people to flee in the next few hours' 'window of opportunity' as she calls it.

She said: "I don't think Australia has ever seen a storm of this size, this intensity in an area as popular as this stretch of our coast...this is 24 hours of some of the most frightening weather that most people will ever have experienced." 

Many people are in evacuation centres in Cairns. In Townsville the winds are already severe and if people haven't left they're being told to secure their homes and stay put. To go out now is too dangerous, the emergency services say.

And a totally unconnected news story that's just hit the airwaves after a news conference a few minutes ago is that our most successful Olympian, swimmer Ian Thorpe, has announced that he's returning to swimming and plans to train in...Abu Dhabi.

Weird wild weather

I'd just about finished yesterday's post when Mrs Seabee called to say she'd finished in the office and was outside our building waiting to go to lunch.

I walked out into sunshine...but by the time I got to the car I was being buffeted by gale force winds and smothered in sand.

It came out of nowhere, instantly.

We drove through Dubai Marina and in front of us it looked like this:

But to the right it was like this:

It seemed to be in a narrow band that we were driving through because Al Sufouh Road was much the same - compare the blue sky to the left with what we were driving into:

After lunch it had disappeared as quickly as it had arrived but it left evidence that it had passed through:

 We went out to Global Village later in the afternoon and it had blasted through there too. All the stallholders were sweeping sand away, clearing rubbish and dusting their stock. Not a lot of damage and, in the way of these mini-cyclones, it had been selective in what it destroyed:

Note the hand in the right of the photo - Dubai residents will be very familiar with it. The immediate reaction to any problem is:

"Save my brother first"

I've said many times before when I've posted about major events that they're really a jigsaw of many small, individual, personal stories.

A tragic example is one such individual story that's part of the jigsaw of the Queensland floods event. The story of a true hero, only thirteen years old, and passers-by who risked their own lives trying to save strangers.

Warren McErlean watched the water on a street gauge in Toowoomba rise twenty centimetres in ten seconds as the inland 'tsunami' hit the town.

He saw a car with a family in it, thirteen year old Jordon Rice, his ten year old brother Blake and mother Donna, with water up to the number plate.

Warren tried to get to the car but by the time he'd walked twenty metres towards it the water was over its bonnet.

He roped himself to a pole and again tried to reach the car but was washed away. Another passer-by, known only as Chris, pulled him out, tied himself to the pole and managed to get to the car.

He grabbed Jordan, but the boy insisted that he save his younger brother first. Blake was carried to safety.

Chris went back to the car where he grabbed Jordan's hand but the rope snapped, the car flipped over and Jordan and Donna were swept away.


Jordan Rice. Hero.
Photo: Sydney Morning Herald

Warren was interviewed on Radio 2UE, and you can listen to his account of what happened here.

Land of extremes

This time of year I'm usually posting about bushfires causing death and destruction in Australia.

We do indeed have fires, in the west. Not far from Perth a deliberately lit fire has destroyed a dozen homes:


Photo: Alf Sorbello perthnow.com.au

There's a large area burnt out but fortunately no casualties reported.

The animals won't be as lucky, although people do their best to rescue them:

Photo: Alf Sorbello perthnow.com.au

But this 'fire season' the big news is the flood disaster hitting Queensland.

The news an hour ago was that thirteen people are dead and another forty three are missing...and the worst of the flood is yet to come.

Towns have been destroyed by flash flooding, with 'tsunamis' of six to eight metres coming out of nowhere and catching people by surprise.

One third of Ipswich, a suburb of Brisbane, is under water. Brisbane itself, our third largest city, is on high alert with many suburbs already flooded and mass evacuations from the city centre. The river runs through the centre of the city and is due to peak at 4am Brisbane time. Fortunately the predicted 5.4 metre peak has been revised to 5.2 metres. It's still a hell of a lot of water - measure it!

5.4 metres down to 5.2 doesn't sound a big difference but it means thousands of properties won't be flooded. The current reports are that 20,000 properties will be.

The area under water is larger than France & Germany combined and the flood waters are headed south into New South Wales so the north east of my home state is threatened.

People are being rescued from cars which have been washed away and from the roof of their homes...

Photo: Sky News. Town of Lockyer

Photo: Courier Mail. The town of Toowoomba

This shot from a television camera in a chopper shows a family on their sinking 4X4. The mother and son were rescued but sadly the father, a well-known local personality James Perry, is missing.

Photo: The Australian

The animals are affected too and people are doing their best to help them:

Men jumped in and battled to rescue this trapped horse, which was disoriented and couldn't find its way to the nearby high ground:

Photo: Network 10

The wild animals are in trouble of course, finding any high ground or something, anything, to cling on to, like this goanna:

Photo treehugger.com

And animals help each other in times of danger too.

This is one of the most amazing photos to come out of it so far. Armin Gerlach was visiting friends in the flood-hit town of Dalby when he spotted a brown snake (the world's second most venomous) giving a green frog a ride through the flood waters:

Photo: Armin Gerlach

The fog dun some of it

Fog can make for interesting photos, like this morning in Dubai Marina...



...but when it's combined with idiot drivers the picture is quite different:

Photo: Gulf News

Abu Dhabi once again had the worst of it. In this 18 vehicle crash two people were killed and eleven were injured, two seriously.

At least the fog wasn't blamed this time. This carnage was attributed to an idiot driver, who apparently "exited the highway without paying attention to traffic in the adjacent lane".

Nothing new there then.

The fog dunnit elsewhere in AD though. They weren't crashes, they were 'accidents'.

According to Gulf News ...multi-vehicle accidents...were due to poor visibility and heavy fog at dawn.

I'm concerned about some of the advice reportedly given to motorists by the Director of AD Police Traffic & Control Dept. 'Take simple precautions such as switching on hazard lights' was part of his advice according to Gulf News.

Gulf News has the story here.

Climate change is here

We've certainly got climate change this month.

My view in Spring is usually like this...

Blue sky, blue sea, sunshine, warmth.

Half of the time I've been back it's been like this...

Grey sky, grey sea, raining, cold.

We're into November and I have the heating on, something I can't remember doing in November before.

Cricket is on at the Sydney Cricket Ground - a one day international against Sri Lanka - but rain's just stopped play, the covers are on, it's only 4.30pm but they have the lights on.

Football weather, not cricket weather. It's not like any Spring I remember.

Hot & dusty

There's a whole team of street cleaners in Dubai Marina, each with their own patch to keep clean and rubbish free.

I see this guy every morning with his broom and black plastic bag.

It's hot, it's dusty and like his colleagues he does the sensible thing and wraps up to keep the sun off and the dust out.



Cap with a large neck flap which he ties across his face, sunglasses, gloves...fully covered.

It's an interesting comparison - people, from hot sunny climates cover up to keep the sun off, people from colder climates wear as little as they can in the sun; shorts, singlets, flipflops being streetwear of choice it seems.

Trivia - these street cleaning guys are, according to the ID across their back, part of 'House Keeping'.

It's quiet out there

There's nothing going on is there?

The UAE blogosphere is very quiet but that's just a reflection of the lack of anything much happening in the real world.

Every summer's the same, but this one probably quieter than we've had for many years because of the global economic meltdown.

Apart from the development/construction slowdown which has hit us the holiday exodus is well under way, the roads are quieter, the restaurants have fewer customers, the people still here are staying indoors. There's no news of activity from the commercial sector so there's nothing happening on the stock market. Outside workers have their midday break so construction stops - in fact at that time of day the whole city seems to be in pause mode.

Apart from the handful of sweating tourists I've seen, staggering around in the heat and humidity realising why they got such a cheap package deal, everywhere is quiet.

I haven't even seen what the UK's Observer newspaper reported to its readers: "Middle-aged men in responsible jobs – accountants, marketeers, bankers – who for 10 months of the year are devoted husbands, transform in July and August into priapic stallions roaming the bars of Sheikh Zayed Road."

Anybody else seen the herds of priapic stallions stampeding up and down SZR?


Ridiculous article in the Observer.

BTW, I didn't post on the Observer column because Alexander did it so well here on his blog Fake Plastic Souks.

Dontcha just love 'experts'

They're all too eager to talk to the media for their fifteen minutes of fame, the 'experts'.

When they're confidently and authoritatively telling us what will happen in the future - that is, guessing wildly at what may happen - as they so often do, there should be a mandatory warning on the reports. Like the cigarette health warning.

You know, along the lines of This report contains unsubstantiated guesses about the future. Please take with a pinch of salt.

Today's winner in the 'guessing about the future but getting it hopelessly wrong' game is under a wonderful headline in Gulf News.

The lead story on the front page is: Heatwave no cause for panic.

That'll cause panic then.

Continuing in the panic mode the report includes this: In Saudi Arabia, a local newspaper quoted a meteorologist, warning that temperatures could this week soar to 80 degrees Celsius in the sun in desert areas. Dr Khalid Al Jama'an said that temperatures would also soar in cities.

The winner of the wrong prediction expert pronouncement.

The highest temperature ever recorded in the world - and there's some scepticism about it - is 58C (136F).

Gulf News did report on page 3, under the much more sensible heading of: Prolonged, hotter than usual summer forecast, that 80C was impossible.




Don't panic!
Hot summer.

Multi-vehicle pile up

One dead and up to forty injured when between twenty and thirty vehicles crashed this morning.

It happened on the Jebel Ali-Lehbab Road when a bus crashed into a truck, another truck crashed into the bus and the pile up began.

Police say tailgating and the fog were responsible.

I disagree. The fog was not responsible, irresponsible dangerous driving was responsible.

As a result, the driver of the bus is dead and four other people are seriously injured. A further eight have 'moderate' injuries, whatever that means.

Yesterday I said that on my early drive I didn't see bad or dangerous driving in the fog. It was a one-off, an abberation. Later in the morning I did see my share of morons.

This morning I was almost wiped out twice in five kilometres.

A Landcruiser coming straight into the roundabout I was on, the driver not aware because he was too busy chatting on his mobile phone.

Then one of those ridiculous huge Ford pickup trucks, speeding in the overtaking lane, the driver deciding at the last second to turn off right. That meant swerving across in front of me to do it. Another coat of paint and he'd have hit my front end.



Gulf News and The National are both carrying the story.
Gulf News.
The National.